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'The Public Gaze And The Prying Eye': The South And The Privacy Doctrine In Nineteenth-Century Wife Abuse Cases, Jerome J. Nadelhaft

Jerome J Nadelhaft

A slightly revised version of this posted ms has been published by the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender, 14: 2008. In the last ten years a new paradigm has emerged regarding wife abuse court cases in mid nineteenth-century America. Put briefly, the argument is that while society moved away from accepting violence against wives, courts found a way to allow husbands to continue to exercise their power to chastise. Judges agreed abuse was wrong, but they argued that society would be greatly harmed by state interference in domestic affairs. In other words, family privacy was more important than protecting …